Toronto Councillor John Campbell’s (Ward 4, Etobicoke Centre) much-anticipated motion is expected to hit the Council floor next week. His proposal would force Pride to include a contingent of armed, uniformed police to march in the parade, or risk losing City funding.
“From the City of Toronto perspective, I don’t feel that we should be giving public money to an organization that is expressly excluding some of our employees,” he said.
To illustrate his point, the councillor went on to raise a hypothetical situation where the Toronto Symphony Orchestra might arbitrarily forbid the fire department from attending its events—presuming, of course, that the Toronto fire department has a pattern of physically assaulting orchestra players, parallel to the history of homophobic and racist policing in Toronto.
Alex Verman Green 